We made reservations a few days ago for a shared van at 9:00 this morning to take us from Cuenca to Guayaquil. From there, we planned on taking a public bus to Salinas. We arrived early for our van… and found the company closed with nobody around…? I called the phone number on the business card we had picked up, and proceeded to have a (broken) Spanish conversation with the manager. He insisted that our trip for was mañana (tomorrow), while I insisted it was today. He finally just said (in Spanish) “no cars today” and hung up…
There are four van services in a row on this street, so we went to the next one. “Sorry, no cars today. Try tomorrow.” Huh???
Turns out that the presidents of both Ecuador and Peru flew in this morning for a bi-national summit to discuss border issues. Their entourages rented every van in the city, and all other reservations are ignored. Not even a phone call to warn us. Oh well, such is life in Latin America.
We took a taxi to the bus terminal and grabbed a public bus instead. The bus only costs $8 per person, so we saved some money in the process. While waiting for the bus, we met and talked to a young British man who has spent the last 20 months backpacking around the world. He said he was just about out of money, and would have to go back home and get a job soon. What does he do? He said he is a Natural Physicist. When I asked what that was, he explained that most people know it as Astronomer. He specializes in globular star cluster formation, plus the technical design of adaptive optics. It was surprising to hear someone so smart and educated (and fit and good looking), just picking up and taking off alone. He said he figured that if he didn’t do it now, he would be “an old man of 35” before he got the chance again. Ouch! 🙂
Pauline’s seat-mate was a grandmotherly type that talked up a storm with Pauline, while Pauline furiously looked up phrases in her Spanish dictionary to understand and respond. After awhile, Pauline started teaching the woman some English, and she delighted in pointing out the window and saying “cow!”
When we pulled into Guayaquil at 1:00, we decided to get the bus ticket to Salinas first, then use the restrooms and get something to eat. That was a bit of a mistake, as the ticket they sold us was for a bus leaving in 5 minutes. We barely made it to the departure gate in time, so the restroom and food had to wait another 3 hours…
As we rolled into Salinas, Pauline asked the driver where we should get off. The driver spoke good English, and pulled the bus over at the side of the road, telling us that our hotel was just 4 blocks away, directly towards the beach. Nope. Either he was mistaken, or he thought we were going to a different hotel, since it was nowhere to be found, and nobody we asked knew where it was.
We stopped in a small restaurant for the long-delayed restroom stop and a small meal. Bad choice on the food part. For all the raves we had heard of Salinas seafood, nothing there was very good. We then hailed a cab, and he also had no idea where our hotel was, even though we had the address for it. He radioed in, drove us to the approximate neighborhood, stopped and asked someone sitting on a sidewalk, and finally got us close enough that we could walk the last stretch.
They were painting outside our room when we arrived, so the room smelled enough to give me a headache, and the wi-fi doesn’t reach beyond the first floor. Salinas was not giving a good first impression so far…
We decided to go for a walk on the beach, and then things began to improve rapidly.
The beach here is every bit as nice as it was reported to be. Not very crowded at all, with a few families out enjoying a walk on the sand, or playing at the water’s edge. The weather was balmy and very pleasant.
We were there just a little before sunset, but there had obviously been others on the beach earlier, since there were quite a few sand-writing examples.
At one point, we saw some men drag a couple of huge swordfish up on the beach.
Around 7:00 (an hour past sundown) we decided to have dinner at one of the restaurants that Evelyn had read about in the guidebooks. We chose Oh Mar, and decided to split a single seafood paella. It was a good thing we only ordered one, as it was huge, and topped with luscious shellfish. The guidebooks were right — this was a fabulous meal.
Pauline topped dinner off with an ice cream cone.
After a rough start, Salinas is turning into a nice place to visit for a day or two.